All about the hook

I recently attended a 'schoolgirl theme junk party' (technically, it wasn't a junk and somewhat worryingly even the guys adopted the idea of 'schoolgirl'), and having scoured most of HK finally found the perfect skirt in a market two minutes from work. Perfect equating to tartan and tarty. The problem is essentially that when one is wearing fancy dress and one is with a large group of people also wearing fancy dress, one blends in seamlessly; when one leaves the group to, for example, get one's ferry home, difficulties can be encountered. The short skirt resulted in my having a conversation on the ferry with some random married guy who asked me to go to his best friend's birthday party the next night, informed me while rubbing my arm that it wasn't possible to help who a person fell for, and hey, have his business card... I gained the distinct impression that, despite my explanations for my attire, he thought I was a hooker. (Oy, no shouts of, 'well, in fairness...' from anyone there).

Just to clarify to myself here, and to any men bothering to read this, I am not now, and nor will I ever be, a hooker - not in even the loosest possible sense of the word. Much as I may joke occasionally about dropping my pursuit of a mad passionate romance in favour of someone with more money than sense (not difficult given that I'm after a guy), I will never in any way give away a part of me because a person puts me under an obligation to them. And while I'm on the topic of men, a word I'm saying with an increasing feeling of disgust, pray would someone tell me why the heck I would want one anyway? I know men who cheat on their girlfriends and wives; I know men who travel to a different city and remove their wedding ring for a night out; I know men who date five women at a time and at the last minute will say to any teary eyed girl that hang on, they never said they were EXCLUSIVE, right? And I know of men who go onto internet dating websites and locate vulnerable women (I mean, come on, anyone on a dating website is vulnerable to at least some degree), making use of them mercilessly by convincing them for a few short weeks that they are madly and passionately in love and how on earth didn't they know the other existed before, then proceed to be increasingly less available while inventing ludicrously impossible stories that the woman believes - because, let's face it, she wants to. Men want someone to cook and clean and be available in the bedroom when they choose, just most of them don't have the guts to admit it these days. They want someone intelligent enough to bring up their children for them, but stupid enough that they won't notice the later hours at the office, the business trips away, and who - by the time they notice the proverbial lipstick on the collar - are so trapped they dare not say anything. Oh, they may not consciously want all this, but that is what they're after.

A recent BBC report found that 1 in 10 men in the UK between the ages of 25 and 34 sleeps with prostitutes. That is, roughly speaking, 10% of the guys I know. (At a fair guess, they are the ones who aren't so good looking and therefore not quite as capable of sauntering into a bar and picking off some fair game for the night). Three men were interviewed who were apparently 'unashamed' of their exploits with prostitutes, although notably the two married ones hadn't told their wives. The men appear to be under the very much misguided impression that they are friends with the women, they are helping them out financially in a country with an under-par welfare system (don't even get me started on that), that the women enjoy the meetings. Apparently, it is possible to make yourself believe and justify anything you want to.

I don't know what the solution is, but I'm sure there is one. I'm sure there is an alternative for the Filipinos who sleep with the ugliest and oldest of English men just so that they can afford a cell phone - men in whose faces I want to spit every time they dare to speak to me. I'm sure there is an alternative for the Romanian women being trafficked to Japan to work as 'waitresses' - I sometimes wonder what became of the woman I met years ago who was in just that situation. Did anyone else read about the Brazilian girl who was kidnapped years ago and recently escaped, with one of the two children she'd given birth to as a result of repeated rapings by her captor? (The other child had died). Did anyone else hear of the British lady who went to Amsterdam, who had drugs forced upon her and, as a result, the life of a prostitute, because she then needed the money to fuel her addiction? Did anyone else hear these endless tales and not think there is something very, very wrong in the world today? No insult to my male readers intended, but I would guarantee that women are more affected by these stories than men - because men will always continue to justify their actions. Prostitution is, after all, the oldest profession in the world, isn't it... And any woman who believes that prostitution is the ultimate empowerment a woman can have - making men pay for what they can have free elsewhere - is a deluded fool.

Briefly continuing the theme of 'hook', I am sick to death of my students informing me that an introduction to an essay must apparently start with a 'hook sentence' and that each paragraph must comprise the PEA structure: point, evidence, analysis. I know one has to be taught to write essays but my word, how to make a child hate essay-writing...

Ending with the final stanza of William Blake's poem, 'London' -

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

And Angela Carter, 'Nights at the Circus':
'What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?'